The Baby Surprise by Brenda Harlen

before her tea was finished, Megan slid off the stool.
    â€œAre you okay?” Paige asked.
    Megan shrugged. “I can’t sit for too long, or stand for too long, or do anything without feeling restless and…oh.”
    Paige was immediately on her feet and beside her cousin. “Meg—what’s wrong?”
    The other woman’s face was pale, her eyes wide. Paige wasn’t sure how it was possible, but her cousin somehow looked both excited…and terrified.
    â€œI think…my water…just broke.”
    â€œOhmygod.”
    Megan just nodded.
    Paige’s brain scrambled. She’d been through this before, when Olivia had gone into labor with Emma, but at the moment she couldn’t remember what to say or do. “Okay. Um. What are we supposed to do now?”
    â€œI don’t know about you,” Megan said, sounding fairly calm, “but I’m going to call Gage.”
    â€œOh. Right. Good idea.” Paige turned to reach for the phone on the counter but stopped when Megan grabbed her arm, hard. “Contraction?”
    Her cousin nodded.
    â€œAre you breathing?”
    Megan nodded again.
    And then, as if Paige wasn’t already frazzled enough, the doorbell rang.
    She handed the phone to Megan before she went to answer the door.
    â€œOh, Zach. I’m sorry, but this really isn’t a good time.”
    â€œBut I called this morning and you said—”
    â€œThis morning my cousin wasn’t standing in my kitchen in the beginning stages of labor,” she told him. “But now I have to get Emma up from her nap so we can take Megan to the hospital—”
    â€œOr I could stay with her,” Zach offered.
    â€œWith Megan?”
    He smiled, and even in the midst of all the chaos and confusion, her heart gave a giddy leap. “With Emma.”
    â€œOh, of course.” But she hesitated.
    He was offering an obvious and easy solution. But her brain was still scrambling, and while her hormones were urging her to take whatever this man was offering, she wasn’t quite ready to trust him alone with the little girl who had been entrusted to her care—even if he was Emma’s father.
    â€œPaige!”
    She whirled away from the door, summoned by her cousin’s impatient demand.
    Zach stepped into the foyer behind her. Holding back a sigh of frustration, Paige chose to ignore him and focus on Megan.
    â€œGage said he’ll meet us at the hospital, but he’s going to be a while.”
    Knowing how devoted her cousin’s husband was to his wife and how excited they both were about the baby, Paige was more than a little surprised by this response.
    â€œHe’s in Manhattan,” Megan explained.
    â€œManhattan?”
    Megan nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “He’s supposed to be here.”
    â€œHe will be here,” Paige promised, almost certain it was true. After all, it was only a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Manhattan, and Megan would undoubtedly be in labor a lot longer than that. “But in the meantime, we should get you to the hospital.”
    â€œI need my bag.”
    â€œI can get your bag after I get you to the hospital.”
    â€œI need to take my bag to the hospital,” Megan insisted.
    Paige knew her cousin’s insistence wasn’t as much about the bag as it was about the fact that Megan didn’t want to go to the hospital without Gage, because she didn’t want to have her baby without the baby’s father by her side. So Paige took her hands and squeezed gently.
    When Megan looked up, Paige simply said, “Breathe.”
    Megan drew in a lungful of air, then exhaled it slowly.
    â€œBetter?”
    The mother-to-be nodded. “But I still want my bag.”
    â€œHoney, your house is in the opposite direction from the hospital.”
    â€œI could take Megan to the hospital and you can go pick up her bag when Emma wakes up from her nap.”
    Until